


In the Surrender

by Partridge_Scolops



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket (Anime 2001), Fruits Basket (Anime 2019), Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Curse, Dystopia, M/M, Mentions of Past Rape but it is not at all detailed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24398254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Partridge_Scolops/pseuds/Partridge_Scolops
Summary: After the devastating third world war, civilization has crumbled and all they have left is each other. Sometimes Kyo wonders if that will ever be enough.
Relationships: Sohma Kyou/Sohma Yuki
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	In the Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the summer of 2010 and posted it to ff.net. At some point, I deleted that account. I thought this was lost forever, but I found it on a thumb drive. I still like it, so I thought I'd share it here. I hope you enjoy. :)

You sit beside him on the bed—it is neither your bed, nor his, nor anyone's bed, because ownership is just a word now, along with regulation and equality. The room you're in is small, perhaps three hundred square feet, and serves as not only a bedroom, but also a kitchen and dining area, and a living room with a moth-eaten couch. It has been, you estimate, about a year since you both arrived, and this is yet another life.  
  
Outside the hostel, a scorching wind rips everything away. You can't see it through the boarded windows, but you can hear it howl. You hear it throw the metal water trough you'd helped shape with three other members of the colony. You hear it rip the fence right from the ground, tearing away the only semblance of protection you'd really had. You hear it whip sand against the building, scratching like the claws of a hungry beast as it waits for you to emerge from the relative safety of what could be home.  
  
Beside you lies a boy—no, a man now, so suddenly—who you've known since you were a child. He is curled in on himself amongst the rough blankets and lumpy pillows. He should be uncomfortable, but he isn't, and you know why; this is luxury now—this unlit building with its shattered windows and collapsing floors; this is grand living—with two square meals a day and clean water to drink, when it rains; he and you are lucky—you are still together at the end, unlike the others who have lost every last piece of their previous lives.  
  
He sleeps, his face almost as peaceful as it was before The Fall. And you watch him, as you have since then—since he became the only thing you had left. You watch his eyelids flutter, knowing that beneath them, eyes of the purest amethyst are darting, seeing and not really seeing the images of his mind. You watch him breathe, his narrow chest rising and falling and struggling harder for air with every passing day. You watch his fists curl tighter, grasping at something far gone and nearly forgotten.  
  
He is beautiful—Yuki Soma.  
  
He has always been beautiful, of course, but it is a rare gift to be beautiful now, when the sun cannot shine and birds cannot sing and children are killed for meat. His appearance should not mean a thing now—and really, you suppose, it doesn't; his skin—once milk-white like the finest porcelain—is nearly translucent beneath the layers of dirt and sweat; his eyes—which had shone before The Fall, even when he'd been beaten and humiliated by people who should have loved him, are dull and almost lifeless. But he is beautiful still, in ways that cannot be touched by hands, in ways that cannot be seen by eyes.  
  
It is in the way his lips curve—nearly imperceptible and entirely too sad—when you give him the last of your portion of the ration because he is skinny enough to fall apart. It is in the way he hides his face behind his hair so you cannot see him frown. It is in the way he always walks one step behind you, as though you are his shield from searching eyes and feeling hands and the pain of close proximity. It is in the way he cries so quietly you wouldn't even know if you weren't always watching him. And it is in the way he will sink into you when no one else can see, when he holds on to you too tightly and steals away your warmth.  
  
You take a breath and lie beside him. There is a distance between you—not only now, but always—that can only be filled with his permission; only when he needs you; only when being alone becomes too painful. When he is desperate for the familiarity of your presence he will seek you out—if you are not already at his side—to fill that gap and make you alone with him. Sometimes you are alone together for days, and sometimes there are weeks before he will even look at you. But this is alright with you; over the past few years, you have learned patience and it was he who taught you.  
  
A life with him was full of waiting. You'd had to wait two months after The Fall before he spoke again—and then you'd had to wait for him to stop screaming and blaming and breaking things. After that, you'd had to wait for him to stop hating you, the feeling so ingrained in you both that you hadn't even realized you were waiting until the day he stopped—and you stopped—and you didn't know what to do with yourselves. You'd had to wait a year just to see him smile—almost smile; there are no such things as smiles anymore. It was another year before you knew he trusted you—the day he told you everything you never wanted to know; the day he gave you the means to destroy him—but he was already destroyed, and you were not far from it—the day he let you hold him. You'd had to wait again for him to stop crying, but by then the definition of waiting was lost, replaced with another word you'd never thought would relate to you.  
  
Had it been anyone else, you would have moved on. You would have let your frustration take over as it always had before. You would have let your misplaced anger build until you burst—and you wouldn't have cared who got hurt because of it. Had it been anyone else you would have given up and left them in their misery to follow your own, to be alone the way you always had been, to fight for everything that should have been free. But this was him, and he was worth an eternity of waiting. It only took The Fall to show you that.  
  
A sigh falls softly from parted lips and you watch as his eyes open—slow as the sunrise—and you wait for him to look, to see you, to acknowledge you, as only he has ever done. His fingers uncurl stiffly to flatten a palm against age-softened sheets as his body—breakable and broken and still breaking before your eyes with every day that disappears—shifts just a little closer to yours. This is the only invitation you'll receive, you know, and you accept it more than willingly.  
  
You marvel at the way he fits perfectly—not in flawlessness, but in completion—against you. He was always thin, but now he is all sharpness and no softness and holding him feels like he could snap beneath the very weight of your arm. It is what he wants, though—to be held—at least at the moment, and you will never deny him anything as long as you are able to give it.  
  
Your nose finds his neck and you inhale against his paper-thin skin. There is dirt and sweat—an earthy, salty, animalistic scent that you never thought you would enjoy. And there is that smell that has grown fainter since The Fall—one you've always known and had never wanted to enjoy—which is only him. It's like rain, you think—that cool, weighted, clear-air scent just before the water tumbles from the clouds. It's like holding a breath and breathing at the same time—anticipation and resolution at once.  
  
Your name escapes his lips and slides straight into your ear. A shiver passes between you, but you aren't sure who it came from—maybe both of you. It doesn't matter.  
  
Pulling back, you look at his face, at the eyes that tell you everything now—they told you nothing just over a year ago. They are soft and asking, frightened and wanting. You lean in just part of the way—he needs control, at least in this, where he had none before—and you wait for him to finish the connection.  
  
Lips press—hard, dry, warm. And your breath is his to take as he gasps into your mouth—the sound is like a sob, it's so desperate. His body moves against yours, writhing in slow motion like he is trapped, but too tired—too defeated—to really try to escape. His bony fingers are gripping your shoulders too tightly, the bruises beneath re-blossoming at the assault—but you'd rather it hurt than never feel him touch you at all, and this concept isn't new for you. Your whole life, he has been hurting you—all that has changed is the circumstances. Your whole life, you have fought to continue his touch—all that has changed are your feelings.  
  
Again, he speaks your name, his voice all edge and need, and he is crying without tears because he doesn't really know what he wants, but it isn't this.  
  
You tell him to calm down, and pull his body half-way over yours, the way he likes—the way he is looking down on you instead of being held powerless beneath. You touch his hair and card through it a little, but you don't pet it—you know to never pet it. His eyes squeeze closed as he tries to relax—the effort is visible and painful to watch—and you cup his face between your palms. Your mouth is murmuring words even you don't quite catch, but the effect is the one you're after.  
  
He is hurting—Yuki Soma.  
  
He has always hurt. It is a pain he holds deep inside himself, close to his chest and away from curious, well-meaning eyes that would do more harm than good. He had been so good at hiding before The Fall that you had never seen his suffering, and you had been foolish enough to envy him, to hate him for things he'd had and didn't want.  
  
He'd always been given things he didn't deserve—even now, he is undeserving of this life, this bleak, black future—but you had always thought he hadn't deserved the good he'd been given. He is not a saint, he is not perfect, and he is no hero, but no one should have gone through what he had—what he still goes through inside his head—and all those years ago, you had sneered at him sooner than given him a hand.  
  
Through misunderstandings you were too proud to correct, through lies you were too willing to believe, you allowed yourself to hate him and caused him to hate you. An injury committed too long ago to take back was the root of your relationship, the only thing you knew about him and he about you. With every insult and every punch thrown, it became harder to discern who was in the lead, and it became easier to forget who had started it all. You fought and hated and all either of you gleaned was more pain, stirring inside of your souls the monster that would swallow you whole if there was no one to intervene.  
  
In a way—twisted, misguided, and selfish—you are grateful for The Fall. It was, you believe, the only force capable of shaking up your lives and turning everything inside-out. It threw you both so far from home you could never dream—and you have never dreamed—of going back. It destroyed the cycle of aimless hatred and hurt. Now, when he hurts you, he does not mean it. Now, when you hurt, it is because he hurts and you know you can do nothing to help—at least, nothing lasting.  
  
But he is calm for now, his head a soothing weight upon your chest as he listens to your heartbeat. Sometimes closeness is too much for him, and sometimes he is so desperate to be against you that you wish your bodies could simply meld into one so you could hold him forever where he is safe and warm and wanted, but right now he is experiencing another 'sometimes', the one in the middle—he is comfortable where he is, content in the simple contact of your body and his.  
  
With one of your hands you caress his back in circles and lines and infinite loops, and his sigh is soft, like audible simplicity. Your other hand reaches up to hold the one he has placed on your chest, and you almost-smile when he lets you take it.  
  
You love him—Yuki Soma.  
  
You love him, and it is something you wish you had known your entire life. It is something that could have swept you away from all that anger, all that fear and self-loathing. It could have made you happy, once upon a time, when the earth was green instead of black and dreams were more than dreams. It is something now-fragile, stunted and hopeless, but you feel it with all of the being you have left. It is something aching—instead of filling your chest, it makes you more hollow than ever before. And it is desperate; you cannot give him anything but yourself, even though he needs and deserves so much more.  
  
But these feelings are something you will never tell him. The relationship you share is not an easy one—it is unstable, wavering, almost fictional—and one thought expressed that should be kept to yourself could break the last part of him. Love is an idea so confused in his mind that it is something to be feared. To even suggest that you care for him could destroy any progress you've made, and if he loses his trust in you, you know you will never get it back.  
  
All you can do is love him—even when that is not enough. All you can do is give—even though everything you have is just short of everything he needs. All you know to do is keep him—even when he doesn't want it—because no one else will care about him when he screams, and no one else will know how to touch him, and no one else will really look at him the way you do—the way he should be looked at; like he alone is more valuable than the billions of people who died with The Fall.  
  
He breathes loose words into the air which settle one by one upon your ash-darkened skin. You breathe them back and watch as his eyelids close and cover those jewel-colored eyes—so like stars that every time you see them gaze in your direction you feel there is a wish to be made.  
  
He is not soft against you—he might have been, once, but that is not something you will ever know. Comfort is an idea that changes with time, and you could not sleep now without the feel of his ribs in your circling arms, or the notches of his spine beneath your fingertips, or his sharp chin pressing bluepurpleblack into your skin.  
  
He slows and he stills and you follow him, silent—as he will follow you until there is nowhere left to go—chasing dreams that are useless and hopes that are futile, as you wish and want for what cannot be...  
  
_Now you lie on a blanket of greener-than-green, where the wind weaves whispers into your hair. The sun floats above, golden again, in a sky as blue as sapphire. Here, he is yet beside you, his eyes on you and yours on him. The cold you know you should feel has bloomed into warmth all over.  
  
Now, he knows all the words you've never spoken; they drift, sure and easy, between you both. In a breath he has accepted them. Here, he looks at you the way you've been looking at him for so long—like slow fire and something soft. It is the calmest you have ever seen him.  
  
There is a movement of his lips which paints him whole and the world right. Now and here, there are such things as smiles._


End file.
